Friday, June 24, 2011

Question: Is changing my consumer habits because of free wifi the responsibility of the shop keepers or a demonstration of a poor hardware choice on my part?

Today I didn't go where I wanted to go for lunch. I drove right by that place on on to another place I wanted to go to less. I did this because the second place has free wifi. In retrospect it seems odd to me that I would base the decision of what food to eat on the stop's data availability. But here we are.

This never used to happen. I rarely if ever used my laptop in public places like that. The combination of abysmal battery life and a poor antenna always made taking it a eventually disappointing ordeal. My phone gets internet over 3G. The decision there always seemed to be about if what I was eating could be managed with one hand, leaving an ungreasy hand to manipulate the touch screen (and yes, I have managed to eat wings with one hand to be able to surf at the same time).

Then came the tablet. While battery life isn't something to sing about it is much, much better than my laptop. On the other hand, I have a wifi only tablet. For the first time today I kinda regretted not getting the 3G version (which would last right up until I was billed for it even once).

So here I am, out for lunch, just looking for a place with unhealthy food and free wifi. McDonalds has free wifi, but I am trying to cut down. Rock Bottom has free wifi, but I am looking for fast food or fast casual. Uncle Sam's? No. Qdoba? No. Chipotle? No. Ok, ok already, back to Panera.

Talk about your 21st Century Problems.

Now I am sure that people will tell me I am framing the problem incorrectly. I have internet at home (and at work for that matter). Why not eat at home, or pack a lunch. Yes, you're right. Or they could say I should jailbreak my phone to enable tethering so as to be able to access the 3G internet connection on my phone through the tablet. Of the two, the latter is probably more likely to happen.